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Mondragon as the new city-state

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Re: Mondragon as the new city-state

#331

Post by Apocryphon »

WalterBright wrote: post #317
Apocryphon wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not a Marxist so I have no interest in justifying their theories. However, if I made my personal brand all about being what a staunch anti-Marxist I am, I would hazard an effort to try to understand their position, if for nothing else but to understand why so many others have bought into it, and to be a more effective opponent against it.

Marxism is just one of many utopian schemes that do not work. I do not need to study every perpetual motion machine design to dismiss them. It's their job to show that they work. What amazes me is the people who desperately cling to Marxism despite its 100% failure rate. How can they make a career studying it and never notice its history? Do you notice that nobody has been able to point to a Marxist success story, af…

> I do not need to study every perpetual motion machine design to dismiss them. It's their job to show that they work. What amazes me is the people who desperately cling to Marxism despite its 100% failure rate.

Maybe if you bothered to try to understand the perpetual machine that everyone’s bought into then you wouldn’t be so amazed by people buying into it all of the time

Re: Mondragon as the new city-state

#332

Post by max_hoffmann »

chongli wrote: post #268
max_hoffmann wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where’s the cooperative in your example? Either you are a freelance author who has a contract with a publishing cooperative. In this case you have a contract with that cooperative and during the negotation process both sides decide together what happens in case of death before publication. Or you are an author inside a publishing cooperative, so you own part of that cooperative and decide together with the other auth…

The example way above was NVIDIA. Suppose the person who passed away was one of the founding researchers at the NVIDIA worker coop. They developed most of the key technologies that go into a graphics card, but they died during the later stages of production ramp up, before the first GPUs are able to hit the market. The issue is that the deceased researcher's contribution to the project may be so central and foundatio…

I recommend reading more about existing cooperatives. They offer way better packages to their employees than manager-owned companies. This can also include life insurances, health insurances, child care etc. And since everyone working and owning a company, where the profits might come in at a later stage, you can be sure, that these people working towards that goal, will make sure that they have the security they require. Why wouldn’t they? It’s their job and their company. They have everything required to set up the necessary legal work.

The case with the novelist is also easy to answer. Publishers do more than just printing books. They also do marketing, host events, send authors to interviews etc. All of that work becomes smaller if you share it with others. Plus being new to the industry, you can get the help from experienced writers. Cooperating with other people has loads of advantages. I could go on for hours. Also nobody is forced to join cooperatives. Every novelist can decide to remain a freelancer. It’s basically a cooperative with a single worker. A lot of cooperatives are founded by groups of freelancers by the way, because already having a business mindset, having experienced the freedom of owning your own business and wanting to stay in control when collaborating with others, makes cooperatives the obvious choice.

You are always more free, have more options and are treated better when you own the result of your work.

Re: Mondragon as the new city-state

#333

Post by nec4b »

aguaviva wrote: post #300
nec4b wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Couldn't it just be argued that free market extremism is as much folly as a pro-central planning position? You shouldn't have a problem demonstrating this then? It's easy to enumerate all failed central planned economies, there really never was one that succeeded. Why don't you give an example of country that failed miserable with millions of deaths because of too much free markets.

Why don't you give an example of country that failed miserable with millions of deaths because of too much free markets. The beauty of capitalism is that it works (or seems to work for some people, for the time being) by externalizing its true costs to other countries, other social strata -- and indeed far into the future. Though mortality rates seem not to have risen (and may in fact declined) in the U.S. during the…

>> or seems to work for some people, for the time being

It seems to work for any country that embraced free market ideas the same way socialist policies predictably don't work in any country that tried them.

You are seriously claiming WW2, colonialism and climate change is a direct consequence of people having too much choice? If only Germany had a strong dictator preventing people to be too free to choose, oh wait,...

Re: Mondragon as the new city-state

#334

Post by aguaviva »

nec4b wrote: post #333
aguaviva wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why don't you give an example of country that failed miserable with millions of deaths because of too much free markets. The beauty of capitalism is that it works (or seems to work for some people, for the time being) by externalizing its true costs to other countries, other social strata -- and indeed far into the future. Though mortality rates seem not to have risen (and may in fact declined) in the U.S. during the…

>> or seems to work for some people, for the time being It seems to work for any country that embraced free market ideas the same way socialist policies predictably don't work in any country that tried them. You are seriously claiming WW2, colonialism and climate change is a direct consequence of people having too much choice? If only Germany had a strong dictator preventing people to be too free to choose, oh wait,.…

Of "people" having too much choice, no.

The vast majority of folks have comparatively few meaningful choices available to them. About things like Android vs. iPhone, sure. But about things that actually matter -- like the fact that they have to work so hard all their lives; and that they probably have to drive a car to get there; that the oceans are filling up with microplastics, and their drinking water with something called PFAS that very few people had even heard of until very recently, and so on -- not all that much.

What I mean is that these bad things are the result of centuries of the elites of these partially "free" societies having too many choices available to them.

Or more specifically: of not having to account for the true costs of their choices.

Re: Mondragon as the new city-state

#335

Post by sickofparadox »

cylinder714 wrote: post #133
Aloisius wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is no value without labor. Yet wine is higher valued than grape juice. Value can clearly exist without labor.

Winemaking requires far more resources, labor, skill and time than simple grape juice production.

Grapes will naturally ferment themselves into wine over time, but grape juice essentially did not exist until the industrial revolution because we needed methods to prevent the fermentation. [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grape_juice

Re: Mondragon as the new city-state

#336

Post by derelicta »

"Could we eventually create a capitalist paradise where democratically run companies use their profits for the good of their worker citizens? Could that even replace our existing governments?"

Dude reinvented the socialist mode of production but renamed it "capitalism" instead lmao

Re: Mondragon as the new city-state

#337

Post by anthk »

nickpinkston wrote: post #272
calf wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Based on what I've heard I'd love to visit there and even have a chance to intern there. I'd like to see for myself firsthand what life would be like. Would it be boring? Would it be bureaucratic or unmeritocratic? Would that bother me personally? I don't speak Spanish, unfortunately. Obviously this article gives a rosy picture. However, the renewed interest in alternatives is precisely due to the new forms of arbitr…

They also don't speak much Spanish there, as the Basques have their own ancient unique language (a non-Indo-European isolate actually) and culture due to their mountain isolation and resistance to everyone, even the Romans. The people I worked with there all spoke English. You might try reaching out to these guys if you want to visit. They actually get a lot of visitors, and there's a whole tour program I did when I…

We can perfectly speak both fine. At least the ortography it's 97% the same.

Re: Mondragon as the new city-state

#338

Post by JoeJonathan »

Viliam1234 wrote: post #228
harwoodjp wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You guys are both discussing intelligence hierarchies (wtf?) without regard to actual history of popular labor movements being violently squashed.

Maybe the ability and willingness to violently squash others is the highest form of "intelligence"? If you're so smart, why are you beaten up by my thugs?

I can't tell if you're being sarcastic

Re: Mondragon as the new city-state

#339

Post by t-3 »

WalterBright wrote: post #310
Apocryphon wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Therein lies the commonality between all economic systems: where there are people, there is the taking. Industries tend to require raw materials, which many times are located in or around land.

Free markets are not built around taking. They are built around exchanging.

Free markets are a ideal which has never been achieved, much like socialism. There is, and never has been, a market without regulation, and with only voluntary participation and without stolen goods being exchanged.

Re: Mondragon as the new city-state

#340

Post by Optimal_Persona »

qrush wrote: post #92

Just wanted to flag that there are areas in the US that co-operative enterprises do flourish and have knock-on effects. This is biased by my food co-operative experience but just to show that there is an alternative to unfettered capitalism where businesses help each other thrive. - The Minneapolis/St. Paul region has so many food co-ops that there's a co-operative warehouse dedicated to serving them (and other busin…

I also have a background in food co-ops (member owned), I was in the bakery of one for 7 years, then served on its board. Food co-ops are really interesting orgs because food is one of the things people can control in their lives so their feelings, neuroses, fears etc. come out.

When we expanded about 17 years ago we managed to drive a new Whole Foods that had sprouted across town out of business within a year. Haven't heard of that happening elsewhere. They had a terrible location which didn't help but I think it was more due to the loyalty of our customers who had buy-in (literally).

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